“This is amazing.”

You know, what really astonishes me about all this is not that the Russians might have done it, they have done it before, and they are doing it now in other countries. And other countries have done it before, both to their enemies and even their allies, in order to bring about electoral results more in line with their own agendas. And heaven knows, its been done to us, and we certainly have done it to other countries, the CIA used to specialize in this sort of thing. And we didn’t always stop at just influencing elections. Sometimes we sent lawyers, guns and money. There is nothing new or unusual about this sort of political warfare.

No, what is really astonishing is the lengths to which so many of Trump’s supporters have gone to deny that this even might have happened. They simply refuse to accept anything that could suggest his victory was not the result of a unanimous and spontaneous explosion of enthusiastic support from the American masses. Their denial is indistinguishable from the way they process the evidence on global warming. Just contemplating the thought they might be mistaken shakes the very foundations of their world view.

As for the Russians, I think they are about to find out, like we did in Iran when we helped install the Shah in power, that while influencing another country’s internal politics is relatively easy, dealing with the unanticipated consequences is not.